I am (really) still cogitating on the topic I started the other day on defining ourselves. Comments (particularly from Ellendra and Paul Bonneau) have got my brain headed off in a different direction and I’ll simply have to wait and see if I can chase after it and catch it long enough to get something coherent down on pixels. Meantime, here are some links, some related to that topic (though not always in an obvious way), some not at all. The end of neighbors. Or, this being a Canadian article, “The End of Neighbours.” The loss of neighborliness is a)…
3 CommentsCategory: Miscellaneous
After a day of record-setting heat and several weeks of that unfamiliar element, sunshine, today dawned gray. The sky is a solid, featureless mass. For hours, thunder has rumbled near-constantly off in the distance. No lightning visible. No dramatic boomers. Just a perpetual drumroll, first from the southwest, then from the northeast. Ceaseless. Its full day outside but the house lights are on, pallid, greenish, and barely seeming to illuminate anything. No mere human-generated watts and volts can penetrate the preternatural gloom. On goes the perpetual rolling of the sky, moving closer now. I get an inkling of why primitive…
6 CommentsA time or two I’ve heard about somebody’s suicide and secretly thought they did the right thing, saving themselves or their families years of living hell. Other times, suicide has seemed like a rational, or at least a reasonable, choice after a life well-lived but now winding down. But Robin Williams? Robin Williams??? Of course he had demons. He laid them out before the world. But he also had such energy, empathy, manic joy, delight in a world whose every sound and action seemed to pass through him as if he were a human translator of all things wacky and…
11 CommentsDoes it strike anybody else that these “enchanted” (or enhanced) versions of everyday objects are mostly annoying, infantilizing, or both? (Do like the luggage tracker, though!) Wow. Lawnorder. Protect and serve. A pair of cop parents collude to kill their daughter’s boyfriend — immediately after meeting him. (H/T MtK) Oh panic! Oh hysteria! Oh, Fox how could such an idiotic article have made it past your BS filters? Somebody, somewhere, sometime might carry a gun into a bank. Which would be deadly! Catastrophic! And cause firefights to mow down innocents! (Never mind that we don’t have a single fact to…
22 CommentsI’m working on a blogosaurus post, which I hope to have within the next few days. Meanwhile, here’s some randomness for you.
But first (and absolutely foremost), many thanks. Your generosity and support have been mind boggling. After the first red-hot week the roof-raising bleg looked as if it was going to stall out.
But nope. Old friends and new have just kept the funds coming. Robbie, Ava, and Kitsu the cat will all thank you for the dryness this winter. And you darned betcha, so will I.
Now, on to randomness, trivia, and the collection and dispersal of linkage …
14 CommentsDavid Codrea goes digging for the grass roots of the latest “local” anti-gun group … and guess who he finds? Nice detective work, David. (ED NOTE 4/17/17: The original link became obsolete and I substituted a working one at the request of a reader. It reports the same story but does not appear to credit David Codrea.) Salt Lake City police investigate themselves for the slaughter of a dog in its own backyard … and guess what they find? But enough bad news about dogs. Here are a pair of good things. An IKEA store puts life-size cutouts of shelter…
5 CommentsI just came home from morning errands to find my street blocked by serious PUD equipment. Seems they’re doing major electrical work that they neglected to tell anybody about. I have now apparently been “officially” notified that my power will be out most of the day today. Thank heaven I have no deadlines. But I had hoped to catch up on email. I’m seriously overdue with a few people. Sorry, guys; you’ve waited this long and now you’ll have to wait a few hours longer. (And no, I haven’t gotten that generator yet and it’s still going to be a…
5 CommentsRemember when “making a federal case” out of something meant it was a super-serious matter? Well, not so much now. (H/T G) Did development of modern human beings require diminished testosterone? Did it also require … but wait, let a neuroscientist tell you her brilliant ideas. The TED talk. The transcript. (Good one, LA!) Funny. Don’t recall Jesus ever saying that you’d be able to recognize his disciples by their works multi-million dollar residences. Eleven things humans do that dogs hate. (But wait just a minute. My pups love to get hugs from the right person.) I was going to…
9 CommentsI once briefly dated a guy who lived from hand to mouth. He got by on about $600 a month, mostly donated by friends who thought he was a starving genius. Literally he never knew at the beginning of the month whether he’d have enough to make it to the end without going hungry.
He was also a mega-slob. But he always said that if he someday had enough money to live in a nice place he was sure his “naturally clean self” would keep it impressively neat and spotless.
At the time, I lived in a house that was tiny but a gem. I’d bought it from a young architect who’d remodeled it for himself and his family and it was a work of love. Mr. Naturally Clean Self would come over and after an hour it would look … well, just like his place. Grime on the counters. Cabinet doors left open. Jackets and shoes discarded in the middle of the floor, furniture askew.
Now I realize some people just aren’t into keeping a tidy house, and that’s dandy. But I laughed at his self-delusion.
He also believed that someday he’d be famous and fabulously wealthy as an author. But of course, he never put a word down on paper — while at the same time he wouldn’t think of holding an actual job or doing freelance work because that would disrupt his spiritual and creative flow.
20 CommentsOkay, I get why Americans abroad with a deadly disease (and their families) would want to be cared for in the U.S. I understand that the fedgov has some obligation to protect U.S. citizens in other countries (though that’s often more theory than practice). What I don’t get is why the CDC would go out of its way to bring an incurable infectious disease to these shores. I don’t care how many “precautions” you take. We’ve seen how well “precautions” often work. “The app I used to break into my neighbor’s home.” Covert key copying goes high tech. The criminalization…
10 Comments